Thursday, May 15, 2008

Activist Zionists & Armenian Genocide -- Part Two

Testimony written down by Jewish eyewitnesses, Zionists in particular, describes genocidal acts by Ottoman troops against Armenians. We have presented quotes from a book of memoirs by Eitan Belkind, a survivor of the NILI group that decided to spy on the Ottoman forces and inform British officials based in Cairo. This decision was made after NILI members had learned of the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians. Sarah Aaronsohn, sister of Aaron Aaronsohn, was another eyewitness of the massacres as she traveled by train across Anatolia and saw events from the train window. Meanwhile, Henry Morgenthau, an American Jew and US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, sent reports on the genocide back to the State Department in Washington, after receiving reports from his subordinates and other Americans throughout the Armenian areas of the Empire.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were deported from their homes and sent in the direction of Deir ez-Zor [Dayr az-Zawr] in northeastern Syria of today near the Euphrates. Of course, many many died on the way, and Arab sheiks plucked out attractive women for their own, as well as teenage children of both sexes. When survivors of forced marches reached the Deir ez-Zor area, they were massacred in caves and in other ways, as described in the account by Eitan Belkind which we quote from here at length. Deir ez-Zor has been in the news more recently, again in the context of genocide and mass murder. It was in this same region that Israeli special forces destroyed a plant under construction to produce material for nuclear bombs, in September 2007. This was a plant being built according to North Korean designs for the mass murderous Syrian dictatorship of Bashar Assad. It was a cooperative Syrian-North Korean project. Since Syria's main great power protector and sponsor is Iran, and Iran's leadership has threatened to wipe out Israel, the North Korean Communists were collaborating in a project for the mass murder --meant to be a Final Solution, genocide-- of Jews. Which is entirely fitting, that is, that Communists would help in the mass murder of Jews as Stalin did in 1939 when he joined with Hitler to make war on Poland, thus facilitating the Holocaust.

We continue with Eitan Belkind's account of the Armenian genocide:

After three days riding, I reached Aram-Naharayim [the area between the Euphrates and the Khabor rivers], where I witnessed a terrible tragedy. There were two camps next to each other, one Armenian and one Circassian. The Circassians were "busy" with exterminating the Armenians. There were also Arab sheiks who selected beautiful Armenian girls as their wives. Two women approached me and gave their photos to me. Should I ever get to Aleppo and find their families (whether their families were alive was a question), the women asked me to send their greetings to whomever I found there.
The Circassian officer seeing me talk to the two Armenian women ordered me to leave but I stayed to see what would happen to the Armenians. The Circassian soldiers ordered the Armenians to gather dry grass and pile it into a tall pyramid, then they tied up all the Armenians who were there, almost 5,000 souls, their hands tied together and put them in a circle around the pile of grass and set it afire in a blaze, which rose up to heaven together with the screams of the wretched people, who were being burned to death. I fled from the place. I could not stand this horrifying sight. I rode as fast as I could, wishing to get as far from the place as possible. After two hours of crazy gallop, I could still hear the screams of the poor victims until they died out. In two days, I returned to that place and saw the burned bodies of thousands of people.
. . .
At the foot of the mountain, on my way to the city of Urfa in the north, I witnessed several mass-exterminations of the Armenians. People were wretched, desperate to madness. . . All the roads were strewn with the corpses of murdered Armenians.
[grammatical and spelling corrections made by Eliyahu to the translated quotes from Eitan Belkind's book, That's How It Was, the Story of a Member of Nili (Tel Aviv: 1977; in Hebrew; translation by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute),
[כך זה היה : סיפורו של איש ניל''י [תל אביב: משרד הבטחון 1977

This account indicates a planned in advance, systematic, deliberate mass murder of the Armenians. This account leaves no room to imagine that what the Ottoman Empire perpetrated was not genocide. The knowledge of the Armenian genocide [albeit the word did not exist at the time] on the part of the Aaronsohns and other future members of the NILI group is what motivated them to form NILI and make contact with the British in Cairo. A recent book by Ronald Florence, Lawrence and Aaronsohn (New York: Viking 2007), demonstrates the mood among the members of NILI at the time. Florence also points out anti-Jewish measures by the Ottoman army: expulsions of Jews from Tel Aviv, forced labor, starvation, etc. Here is Florence:

Once Aaron [Aaronsohn] and Avshalom [Feinberg] heard Sarah's [Sarah Aaronsohn's] descriptions of what she had seen across Anatolia, they could no longer discount the stories of Turkish persecution and outright massacres of the Armenians as rumors. . . with the ready comparison of the escalating measures against the Jews in Palestine, they concluded that they could only expect the same fate as the Armenians. Just weeks before, new regulations had been announced in Haifa drafting all Jewish men from twenty to forty-five. The new recruits would be issued no bread rations, and no stores of food at home for their families, which made the levy "nothing less than a death sentence --through starvation-- not only for the enlisted men but for the women and children they shall leave behind"[Aaronsohn's words, 12-3-1915] . At the end of 1915 the Turks would still let men buy their way out of breaking rocks on the roads, but after years of starvation few could afford the baksheesh. It was "only a pretext," Aaron wrote in his diary, "the truth being that they would meet a shameful, cruel and certain death." The Jews of Palestine, he and Avshalom concluded, would soon have no escape from the fate that Sarah had already seen inflicted on the Armenians.
"My teeth are ground down from worry about whose turn is next," Feinberg wrote in a note to [Leonard] Woolley [Florence, pp 179-180]

Leonard Woolley was a British spymaster in Cairo and a famous archeologist, who made some serious and unfortunate errors in that field of research, which is another story.
So we clearly see that what happened to the Armenians was real genocide, and that Jews in Israel felt real and justified fear that their turn was coming.
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links added 5-14-2015
Eitan Belkind and his family [here]
Eitan Belkind on Armenian website [here], the Armenian Genocide Museum / Institute
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Coming: A Jewess caught up in the Armenian genocide, the Anti-Jewish Racism of the "peace process," the anti-Jewish racism of Condoleezza Rice and the State Department, Jews in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and Hebron, Muhammad's bloodthirst, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

2 Comments:

Now the Armenian Genocide resolution has reared its head yet again, but diplomatic sources in Israel claim that this time the Turks have not turned to Israel for help. It’s not surprising; the ‘special relationship’ between Israel and Turkey is badly strained these days.

About

The world swims in lies. Who doesn't know that? Even the dupes are told there are lies about. We aim to dispel the fog of lies, especially about Israel, like our prophets of old and our poets like Yehudah haLevi.
We feature historic sources, documents, excerpts from the classics, etc.
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, While yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
The false prophets cry Peace, and there is no peace.
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About Me

צלום דבורה בת יהודה לייב ז''ל
Dvoyreh bas Yehudah Leyb, Eliyahu's mother. My own photo will have to await more peaceful times.
I have been an observer of
the human comedy, and the human tragedy for many years.